


A Better Version

by AlixxBlack



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: 36 questions musical, Alternate Universe, Clara Oswald - Freeform, First Person Narrative, Gen, Hurt, I took a lot of liberties, Song fic, Sorrow, a better version, but also please forgive me, clara is telling the doctor a story, i make vague references, please enjoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 15:34:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17604038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlixxBlack/pseuds/AlixxBlack
Summary: This song!fic story is inspired by specific lyrics from the 36 Questions Musical's number 'A Better Version.'Clara is recounting when she met the Doctor (varies from canon), and how that impacted her through her tenure as a companion to not one, but two regenerations of him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ouranose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ouranose/gifts).



> This story was requested through Tumblr, and asked that I use one of three lyrics to craft a story. I was given a lot of creative freedom and today I wanted to get some fanfiction out since I've been working on an original project on my WP blog (you can find me there by the same name, I post two stories weekly!).
> 
> So this story came to be when I looked it over today and wanted to work with Clara Oswald saying goodbye to the Doctor again.

**CHAPTER ONE:**

**THE MEETING**

* * *

 

_My life started when I went for a jog,_

_And spotted you in the park, sitting with a dog,_

_So I stopped and asked, “Can I pet your dog?”_

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It was a jog. I was only out for a jog, right. Sometimes, the days are long, the people are loud, and you just need to go for a jog! That’s all I was doing. Of course, it couldn’t be just a jog. For some reason, my life is never that easy. When I’m not caught in some memory of a life I never lived, I had been struggling to find reliable. There were always budget cuts or department eliminations. I hadn’t been able to teach a classroom, or hold any job for that matter, since finishing university. It was annoying and depressing.

 

Then there were the nightmares, well, almost nightmares. It’s always about being in space with some man in a blue box. I didn’t tell anyone about it, of course, except my therapist when I was a child. Nobody thought it was anything to worry about, just a manifestation of anxiety. I started to write it off too, and the Internet made it seem like recurring dreams and nightmares weren’t that bad. But those dreams would leave me exhausted in the mornings. I don’t know how I functioned without chips and caffeine. The two most important parts of any single woman’s life, though especially important for my single life.

 

But there was something about this jog that didn’t ad up. I’d been jogging the same street for twenty minutes. I would turn down different roads and alleys but I would always end up in a loop. There’s no way that should have been possible, but it was exactly the situation I had found myself in, and I didn’t trust it. There’s only so much the government can cover up where alien activity is concerned, and while I was never knee deep in the conspiracy theories I wasn’t blind to them either. Everything about the reality loop was alien so I did the only thing any logical person would do: I started looking for differences and breaks in the reality.

 

That’s when I saw you. You were sitting on a park bench petting a Border Terrier that sat next to you. You looked terribly out of place in a sea of people that were going about their day, probably in the same loop as I was in, and it prompted me to stop and make conversation with you. Not knowing if you were someone I could trust or the reason I was trapped, I decided to make casual conversation.

 

Besides, a little animal therapy sounded like a nice dose of medicine at the time. “Can I pet your dog? Border Terriers are my favorite.”

 

“Sure, yes, please, do, yes.” You gestured to the dog beside you but there was something about the way that you used your body that made me think that it wasn’t your dog. Still, I sat down and started petting the dog, your dog as I still call it, and I started asking questions. I was more direct than I should’ve been but we wouldn’t have followed the same path if I was anything but forward.

 

“Do you ever feel stuck? Like you’re living the same life over and over again, living the same scenes from a movie on a constant loop?” Anyone else would have thought I was feeling stuck or having a crisis. I was, I guess, since I’d been living paycheck to paycheck in a tiny flat as far away from my parents as I could get, but that wasn’t the point. Your lips curled up and you nodded. You understood and so you asked me what I knew about parallel universes and time paradoxes. We talked time loops and rifts.

 

And then we plotted a way to break the loop and save the day. It was aliens, of course, wanting to take of Earth, as they tend to want to do, and it was as easy as solving a puzzle in some ways. It had been months, years even, since I had felt so fulfilled and whole. When you invited me to travel with you, I had to accept.

 

I left to travel the stars in the same blue box I’d dreamed of my entire life as Clara Oswald. But while I was flying through time and space, I think I became someone else because whenever I came back to Earth, I wasn’t the same person as I was with you. I had become two people after that day. Maybe this reality didn’t start with me petting your dog, but our story began there – and that’s the only story worth telling.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO:**

**THE FALLS**

* * *

_It felt like my life, but a better version,_

_With you in my life, I was a better person._

_I heard music in the words you were saying,_

_Melodies with no band playing._

_For the first time, I was in love, I loved…_

_Who I was with you._

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Clara Oswald – one person, two people, three people, four? Was I one woman or two, I didn’t know anymore. God, I loved Danny and the way he always waited for me at the end of the school day like I was the same as everyone else. At first, he didn’t know that I was a time traveler, a woman of the stars, but once he learned, he wasn’t surprised.

 

You were the same in a lot of ways. I think that’s why I loved him so much. He was the best of you, except he stayed right where I needed him most. He worked in the same place day after day. He was domestic and ordinary and good. You could never be any of those things, but I loved that about you too. One thing about him that I could rely on, though, was that his face wouldn’t change. He would always be Danny Pink, long-faced and dark-skinned and wide-eyed and _the same_.

 

It’s called Regeneration. When we met, you had floppy hair and a bow tie, and you were so young. We were the same age, in appearance at least, and our relationship was undefined. You posed as my boyfriend once when my parents came over for Christmas. Even though I was always reminding you, and you were always reminding me, that you were most definitely not my boyfriend. And it was for good reason – you wouldn’t always be there. You proved it to me when your face changed. I didn’t know right away that you couldn’t help it, but it was just like in my dreams. The same man with a different face – reliably there but somehow never quite forever and never quite all the time. It made my love for you hopeless.

 

So, naturally, I embraced Danny Pink’s existence and devoured his love. I lied to him, cheated in every way, just so that I could have him on Earth and keep you in my spaceship. I wanted you both for as long as I could have you, and I never thought that I would have to pick someday.

 

But the universe picked for me, didn’t it?

 

Danny Pink died at the hands of one of your enemies, the sort that follows you through all of time and space. Creatures, monsters that you keep running into and fighting against; you brought war back to Danny Pink and he’d already done his time. The moment he died, I was faced with the reality that I loved him more than you because he was the future I knew I would have someday.

 

Only your world, your way of life took him from me. You took my future and that could only mean one thing – I would have to run with you. As sad and angry as I was, that didn’t sound so bad at all. I’d get to be by your side until the very end. When I started traveling with you again after Danny died, I had known that I would die trying to be just like you.

 

And worse than knowing that – I wanted it.


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE:**

**THE END**

* * *

_So I did the only thing I knew how to:_

_I denied who I was because I wanted to keep my life,_

_But the better version._

 

* * *

 

It’s been a long run for you and me, but the day has finally come. I’ve been too brave, too bold, and too much like you, Doctor. Unlike you, I can’t regenerate. I’m dying and I won’t wake up in a few minutes with a new face and a new story to tell. For me, it’s just the end.

 

I still miss Danny and I hope that there’s an afterlife. I hope that I can see him, that I have saved enough lives to find myself in the same place as him so that I can see his brilliant smile again (and his nice rear, I must admit). I have always loved you, Doctor, but it could never be.

 

I became you during our travels, and I love myself for that in a lot of ways. I think the Clara Oswald I was when racing through the stars, rescuing planets and aliens, was the best me I could have ever dreamed of being. Sure, I was a pretty good schoolteacher when I was around. I was a decent mate to the ladies back on Earth when they needed me. My family never missed me at family dinners and holidays. But I wasn’t me when I was on Earth.

 

The only person who knew me and loved me the way I was, the way I wanted to be, was Danny.

 

I know you love me, too, Doctor, but only as much as you’re able to love anyone. You love us all the same, us humans, us companions. You loved the ones before me with the same intensity, and you’ll love those who come after just as well. While that love may manifest in different ways, it all quantifies to be the same. You’d rip holes in the universe to save us – to save anyone.

 

And that’s why I want you to let me die. Don’t gallivant around enacting revenge and demanding heads for my loss. Don’t ask someone to pay with their life just because mine has ended. There’s nobody to blame in this but me, Doctor, and you know it. Let me give my life to your cause. Let me die to save the world, _any_ world, so I can be the best version of myself that I can be: a hero.

 

I want my life to be worth something, like Danny’s.

 

So allons-y! I bid you adieu, Doctor, and all I want you to do is keep running. God, please keep running, because I don’t think a man as clever as you are will ever be more dangerous than when he’s standing still. Find yourself someone new to love, someone to travel with you and make sure you’re not being careless. After all, I was your carer.

 

Get yourself someone who cares, Doctor, so that you don’t forget how to.

 

Goodbye, now. Thank you for everything. It was fantastic.

 

 


End file.
